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Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Timely Help

You probably know that we were working to get the team housing finished. And in a previous post I showed some of the pictures that Brian and Lois sent from the mostly completed cottages. In all, we currently have three small buildings for teams and volunteers.

There were a couple teams scheduled in June and July. It was pretty important to get the team housing completed for them. Over the past couple years we have housed teams in our own home. But since we are no longer in the townhouse, and in fact, not even in the country for these few months, we weren't going to be much help housing teams. The staff houses at The Village are nice, but not exactly set up for hosting large groups...or even small groups for that matter.

Lots of long hours and hard work was going into preparing the team housing. And time was running short. Then one day some of the young guys from our Lebogang Bible Study showed up. None of them are still in high school, and most of them are actually at various universities completing additional studies. But the winter school break allowed them to come back to Welkom for a couple weeks. And they decided to come volunteer their time helping build at The Village.

Now they didn't know that Brian needed the help, they just came to give what they could. They spent a couple days helping put up the ceilings, then Brian assigned them a job of their own. DJ kind of took charge and Brian explained to him what he needed done. The job was pouring sidewalks in front of the buildings. DJ got the tools himself, made sure the forms were set just right to channel water away from the buildings, and then made sure everyone was working hard during the pouring. Sam, Alex, and Makhasi all worked hard with DJ to make sure the job would be completed. And when Brian tried to pay them they refused. Eventually he was able to get them to accept some pay for the work they had done.

But to have young men come and offer to work for free, then to have these young men capable enough to just assign them a job and see it get done well was a huge blessing to The Village. And we were so blessed to hear of their spirit of work for the Lord. In fact, Amber and I were so blessed personally just the other day when we saw DJ's Facebook status update: